Exactly eight years ago, a beaming Donald Trump made his way down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce that he was seeking the Republican nomination for president. At the outset, no one in political or media officialdom took his candidacy seriously and, when it emerged a few days later that attendees had been paid $50 to come, the fundamental unseriousness of the Trump campaign was unanimously proclaimed. Throughout the ensuing weeks and months, as the candidate transgressed and insulted everyone around him, it was repeatedly assumed that the established conventions of politics would soon intervene and that the joke must be nearing its inevitable punch line.

But this cathartic denouement never came. Trump, as it turned out, could in fact make obscene comments about immigrants and rise higher in the polls. He could disparage John McCain and bully his various primary opponents. He could run afoul of the august National Review and pry the Republican nomination from the would-be gatekeepers of movement conservatism. He could even be heard on tape boasting about sexual assault and somehow win the presidency a month later. At every turn, people waited for an invisible barrier to impose itself or some indiscretion to finally go too far. Again and again, neither happened.

After Trump’s improbable victory, many turned to institutions for salvation. Perhaps the electors might be persuaded to change their votes and nullify this nightmare before it went any further. Maybe the Robert Mueller investigation would find irrefutable evidence of foreign collusion, or a Watergate-esque media scoop would discover the proverbial smoking gun. In the wake of the 2020 election, the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and the president’s subsequent impeachment and banishment from Twitter, it again seemed momentarily plausible that his goose might be cooked.